Friday, April 10, 2015

Blog CLXXVIII (178): Honors to the Blog Again

Yesterday this blog celebrated a milestone: it had viewer number 100,000. As I stated before,there were days when I wondered if I was only person reading my postings.

This blog started about three years before it went on-line. In the spring of 2006, I gave a talk about career management issues to the grad students in the history department at the University of Southern Mississippi, where I was a visiting professor. It was a talk I had been wanting to give for years. Later in July and August of 2006, after I had moved and taken a new job, I sat down and wrote a series of essays on things I had learned since I had graduated as a professor about the history profession and how it works. Since I was trying to write two books at the time, these essays sat on my hard drive for the next two and a half years.

A lot has changed in the six years I have been running the blog. A lot in my personal life and a lot at work—all for the good I might add. I ran through the early posts before the end of 2009 just as "In the Service of Clio" was starting to find an audience. I still wonder at times if this is a wise investment of my time. The three part essay “The History Ph.D. as a Novelist” (Blog CII, and Blog CIII and Blog CIV) took nearly 40 man hours worth of work to produce. I am currently trying to write or finish three different book projects—the one on which I am under advanced contract is taking priority—but how much time this blog should get is a legitimate concern. Needless to say, I appreciate all the visits.

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About Me

I am a U.S. diplomatic, political, and military historian. I currently am an associate professor of strategy at the U.S. Naval War College. I am hoping to use these blogs to share some of the insights I have learned on how writing, publishing and the historical profession work. These blogs are designed to be of use to historians in general. Even those that do not share my same research interests should find these postings useful and informative.